Helen Willows,
who leads her Shared Reading group at Qube – Oswestry Community Action, said:

“We received our tea party in a box on Saturday and have had it today! We were 7, and everyone appreciated the cake and tea, the anthology and Jane’s lovely letter.

“The pottery we used I ‘inherited’ from my mum, who would have been 94 today. It’s Portmeirion pottery, which raised a lot of memories about walks there, plans to go there over Easter weekend and a discussion of the light and views – and then a general discussion about china and tea services.

“The main message was a feeling of real appreciation by the group members: ‘how KIND of them to think of us!’; ‘it gives me a warm feeling to know that lots of others across the country are also doing this’; ‘what a lovely letter from Jane – how nice of her to do that’.

“And they were DELIGHTED to receive the anthology : ‘look! There’s poems in here that we’ve read in this group’, ‘look – it tells you where the group is that’s contributed that story’.

“In truth it has been a very special afternoon. Full of laughter and memories. Thank you so much. A great afternoon to end just before Easter.”

Thank you for expressing an interest in volunteering with The Reader. Your details have been sent to our team; we’ll be in touch as soon as possible using your preferred mode of contact. In the meantime, here’s some things you can do to start your Shared Reading story.

1 – Visit a group

If you aren’t an existing group member or haven’t dropped into a session yet; before training, we ask volunteers to attend an open community Shared Reading group. Groups are always free to attend and there is no need to book. Find your closest group here.

You can also get an idea of how a group works with this group snapshot video:

2 – Complete our application form

If you’ve already visited a Shared Reading group and are interested in training to become a volunteer Reader Leader, we’ll ask you to complete our application form. One of the team will email this to you, but you can also download it here if you want to make a start.